Orthodoxy

By Gilbert K. Chesterton (1908)

Preface

This book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and
to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained
of the book called "Heretics" because it merely criticised
current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This
book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative
and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been driven
back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in
writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order
to be sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both
cases is the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation,
not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally
has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive
principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer's
own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling
style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology.
The writer regards it as amounting to a convincing creed. But if it is
not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence.

THE only possible excuse for this book
is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified
when he accepts a duel. When some time ago I published a series of hasty
but sincere papers, under the name of "Heretics," several critics
for whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr.
G. S. Street) said that it was all very well for me to tell everybody
to affirm his cosmic theory, but that I had carefully avoided supporting
my precepts with example. "I will begin to worry about my philosophy," said
Mr. Street, "when Mr. Chesterton has given us his." It was
perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to
write books upon the feeblest provocation. But after all, though Mr.
Street has inspired and created this book, he need not read it. If he
does read it, he will find that in its pages I have attempted in a vague
and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series
of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe.
I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity
made it; and it made me.

I have often had a fancy for writing a
romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course
and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island
in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am either too busy
or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for
the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a
general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking
by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned
out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here
concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt
a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant
emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich
romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most
enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What
could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the
fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security
of coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of
discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing
there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover
New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it
was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem
for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How
can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home
in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens,
with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once
the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being
our own town?

To show that a faith or a philosophy is
true from every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a
much bigger book than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument;
and this is the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth
my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need
for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom
has rightly named romance. For the very word "romance" has
in it the mystery and ancient meaning of Rome. Any one setting out to
dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute.
Beyond stating what he proposes to prove he should always state what
he does not propose to prove. The thing I do not propose to prove, the
thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any average
reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque
and full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate
always seems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better
than existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure,
then he is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a
man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have
ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general
proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination
of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so
to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome.
We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable.
It is this achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue
in these pages.

But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning
the man in a yacht, who discovered England. For I am that man in a yacht.
I discovered England. I do not see how this book can avoid being egotistical;
and I do not quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull.
Dulness will, however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the
charge of being flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen
to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that
this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so
contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible.
If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox,
then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental
activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as
lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is
cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks
it is the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I
never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though
of course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought
it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview
with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another
thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure
in the fact that he looks as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but
it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths.
And I offer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly
people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know),
as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke.

For if this book is a joke it is a joke
against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had
been discovered before. If there is an element of farce in what follows,
the farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I fancied
I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last.
It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one
can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can
accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this
story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne. I freely confess all
the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like
all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them
I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that
I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a
painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished
in the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have
discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were
not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous
position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive
me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing
all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized
religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England;
I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy
of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that
it was orthodoxy.

It may be that somebody will be entertained
by the account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy
to read how I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or
from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have
learnt from my catechism -- if I had ever learnt it. There may or may
not be some entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist
club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish
church. If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the
field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the
pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain
conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But
there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written
the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

I add one purely pedantic note which comes,
as a note naturally should, at the beginning of the book. These essays
are concerned only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian
theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best
root of energy and sound ethics. They are not intended to discuss the
very fascinating but quite different question of what is the present
seat of authority for the proclamation of that creed. When the word "orthodoxy" is
used here it means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling
himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic
conduct of those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere space
to confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch
the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves
got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly
autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature
of the authority, Mr. G. S. Street has only to throw me another challenge,
and I will write him another book.

THOROUGHLY worldly people never understand
even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are
not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made
a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto
of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly
that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That
man will get on; he believes in himself." And I remember that as
I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written "Hanwell." I
said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most
in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves
more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed
star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the
Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic
asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all
who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes,
there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them.
That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed
in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding
in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business
experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would
know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.
Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay.
It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because
he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin;
complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self
is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote:
the man who has it has `Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is
written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend the publisher
made this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not
to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?" After a long pause
I replied, "I will go home and write a book in answer to that question." This
is the book that I have written in answer to it.

But I think this book may well start where
our argument started -- in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern
masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all
inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally
impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin -- a fact
as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous
waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain
religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our
day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable
dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only
part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers
of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality,
admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams.
But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.
The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil
as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly
is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the
religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either
deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present
union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians
seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

In this remarkable situation it is plainly
not now possible (with any hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our
fathers did, with the fact of sin. This very fact which was to them (and
is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially
diluted or denied. But though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do
not think that they have yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum.
We all agree still that there is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable
as a falling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the
purpose of our primary argument the one may very well stand where the
other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories were once judged
by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our present
purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they
tend to make a man lose his wits.

It is true that some speak lightly and
loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment's thought will
show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease.
A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture.
And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed
by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because
it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as
ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself
as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes
him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony
of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does
not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short,
oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people.
This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd
people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why
the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for
ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his
adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal.
But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre
is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately,
and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among
dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses
what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of
to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house;
from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual
journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first
thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake.
There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical
imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly
spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague
association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws
in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very
great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and
if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the
safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly
what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players
do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.
I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that
this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity
is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark
that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some
weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was
morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical.
Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was
full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black
discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on
a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great
English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic,
by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease,
but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes
forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism
dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse.
He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere
we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than
poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear
him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only
some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And
though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision,
he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general
fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite
sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The
result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein.
To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.
The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself
in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician
who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

It is a small matter, but not irrelevant,
that this striking mistake is commonly supported by a striking misquotation.
We have all heard people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as "Great
genius is to madness near allied." But Dryden did not say that great
genius was to madness near allied. Dryden was a great genius himself,
and knew better. It would have been hard to find a man more romantic
than he, or more sensible. What Dryden said was this, "Great wits
are oft to madness near allied"; and that is true. It is the pure
promptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a breakdown. Also people
might remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking. He was not talking
of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or George Herbert. He was talking
of a cynical man of the world, a sceptic, a diplomatist, a great practical
politician. Such men are indeed to madness near allied. Their incessant
calculation of their own brains and other people's brains is a dangerous
trade. It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind. A flippant
person has asked why we say, "As mad as a hatter." A more flippant
person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure the
human head.

And if great reasoners are often maniacal,
it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I
was engaged in a controversy with the Clarion on the matter of
free will, that able writer Mr. R. B. Suthers said that free will was
lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic
would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in
determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be
causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be
broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to
point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern
Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was
certainly remarkable that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know
anything about lunatics. Mr. Suthers evidently did not know anything
about lunatics. The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that
his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless,
they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing
the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is
the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong
enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions
that the madman could never understand; for the madman (like the determinist)
generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman would read a
conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think
that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would
think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If
the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane.
Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart
or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality
is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another
in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is
extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways
his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that
go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by
charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical
for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity
is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has
lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except
his reason.

The madman's explanation of a thing is
always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or,
to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is
at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three
commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have
a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that
all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators
would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a
man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer
to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King
of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities
to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell
him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt
to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy
as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is
to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small
circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite
as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation
is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet
is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such
a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and
cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking
quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most
unmistakable mark of madness is this combination between a logical
completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains
a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.
I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid,
we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to
give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler
outside the suffocation of a single argument. Suppose, for instance,
it were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were the case
of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could
express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this obsession,
I suppose we should say something like this: "Oh, I admit that you
have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into
other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great
deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories
in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose
we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem
to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked
you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier
you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you!
How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller
in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and
pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness
and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them,
because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this
tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being
played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full
of splendid strangers." Or suppose it were the second case of madness,
that of a man who claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, "All
right! Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do
you care? Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and
look down on all the kings of the earth." Or it might be the third
case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt,
we should say, "So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world:
but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit,
with angels no bigger than butterflies! How sad it must be to be God;
and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love more
marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful pity
that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be, how
much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could
smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave
you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!"

And it must be remembered that the most
purely practical science does take this view of mental evil; it does
not seek to argue with it like a heresy but simply to snap it like a
spell. Neither modern science nor ancient religion believes in complete
free thought. Theology rebukes certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous.
Science rebukes certain thoughts by calling them morbid. For example,
some religious societies discouraged men more or less from thinking about
sex. The new scientific society definitely discourages men from thinking
about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact. And in
dealing with those whose morbidity has a touch of mania, modern science
cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In these cases
it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire
health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that
of a beast. A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is
actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable,
and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith.
The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he
will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class
carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle
unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting
out at Gower Street. Decision is the whole business here; a door must
be shut for ever. Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a
miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it
is casting out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists
may go to work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant
-- as intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this: that
the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is
one of intellectual amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it
off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a
child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect
to be cast into hell -- or into Hanwell.

Such is the madman of experience; he is
commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could
be vanquished in mere reason, and the case against him put logically.
But it can be put much more precisely in more general and even aesthetic
terms. He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened
to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity.
Now, as I explain in the introduction, I have determined in these early
chapters to give not so much a diagram of a doctrine as some pictures
of a point of view. And I have described at length my vision of the maniac
for this reason: that just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected
by most modern thinkers. That unmistakable mood or note that I hear from
Hanwell, I hear also from half the chairs of science and seats of learning
to-day; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in more senses than
one. They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the combination
of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense.
They are universal only in the sense that they take one thin explanation
and carry it very far. But a pattern can stretch for ever and still be
a small pattern. They see a chess-board white on black, and if the universe
is paved with it, it is still white on black. Like the lunatic, they
cannot alter their standpoint; they cannot make a mental effort and suddenly
see it black on white.

Take first the more obvious case of materialism.
As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity.
It has just the quality of the madman's argument; we have at once the
sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything
out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance,
Mr. McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands
everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos
may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is
smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of
the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference
of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of
fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea.
The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small. The cosmos
is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

It must be understood that I am not now
discussing the relation of these creeds to truth; but, for the present,
solely their relation to health. Later in the argument I hope to attack
the question of objective verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of
psychology. I do not for the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that
materialism is untrue, any more than I attempted to prove to the man
who thought he was Christ that he was labouring under an error. I merely
remark here on the fact that both cases have the same kind of completeness
and the same kind of incompleteness. You can explain a man's detention
at Hanwell by an indifferent public by saying that it is the crucifixion
of a god of whom the world is not worthy. The explanation does explain.
Similarly you may explain the order in the universe by saying that all
things, even the souls of men, are leaves inevitably unfolding on an
utterly unconscious tree -- the blind destiny of matter. The explanation
does explain, though not, of course, so completely as the madman's. But
the point here is that the normal human mind not only objects to both,
but feels to both the same objection. Its approximate statement is that
if the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And,
similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is
not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk. The deity is less divine
than many men; and (according to Haeckel) the whole of life is something
much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects of it.
The parts seem greater than the whole.

For we must remember that the materialist
philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than
any religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow.
They cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted
in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity
false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism
false and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very
special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism.
Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism.
I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies.
But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much
more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite free to believe
that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development
in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his
spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. Poor
Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might
be hiding in a pimpernel. The Christian admits that the universe is manifold
and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex.
The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil,
a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man
knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist's world
is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane.
The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain
of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite
sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen
never have doubts.

Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit
the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality
I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must
not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as
far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger,
and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case
against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right
or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against
the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually
destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage,
poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism
leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle
to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to
say that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free
thought to destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not to loose.
They may well call their law the "chain" of causation. It is
the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language
of liberty, if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious
that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language
when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like,
that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely
a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not
free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you
may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to
disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive
and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank,
to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs,
to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or
even to say "thank you" for the mustard.

In passing from this subject I may note
that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism
is in some way favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments
or punishments of any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth.
It is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference
at all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting
as before. But obviously if it stops either of them it stops the kind
exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment;
if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite
as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism
is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is
(perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment of criminals; with
any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle.
The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does
believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, "Go
and sin no more," because the sinner cannot help it. But he can
put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment. Considered
as a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic outline of
the figure of the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable
and intolerable.

Of course it is not only of the materialist
that all this is true. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative
logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that
everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes
that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels
or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends
are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his
own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive
to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought
that men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after
the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those
writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating
life for the world, all these people have really only an inch between
them and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round
the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts,
and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in
nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great
individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The
stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother's
face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of
his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, "He
believes in himself."

All that concerns us here, however, is
to note that this panegoistic extreme of thought exhibits the same paradox
as the other extreme of materialism. It is equally complete in theory
and equally crippling in practice. For the sake of simplicity, it is
easier to state the notion by saying that a man can believe that he is
always in a dream. Now, obviously there can be no positive proof given
to him that he is not in a dream, for the simple reason that no proof
can be offered that might not be offered in a dream. But if the man began
to burn down London and say that his housekeeper would soon call him
to breakfast, we should take him and put him with other logicians in
a place which has often been alluded to in the course of this chapter.
The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe
anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any
error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives.
They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with
the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the
health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness
of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it
is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular.
But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity.
It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or
mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is
the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent
eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth.
There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory
meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern
pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher
scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating
his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.

This chapter is purely practical and is
concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity;
we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in
the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles
goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these
pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask
in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps
them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a definite, some will
think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in
the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what
in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As
long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you
create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary
man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always
had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left
himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free
also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for
consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other,
he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His
spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two
different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus
he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such
a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed
the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom
of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was
not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been
the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism
is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does
not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and
succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing
to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist
makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot
say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits
free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations
with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts
the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all
directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle
as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross
as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal,
but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect
and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it
can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart
a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without
altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow
without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross
opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.

Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value
in speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature
will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind.
The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the
light of which we look at everything -- Like the sun at noonday, mysticism
explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility
-- Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase)
all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light,
reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made
Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the
patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a
special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which
all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We
are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something
both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle
of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable,
as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable;
and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her
name.